Check out this video of Tim Nolan, a world record holding professional juggler and basketball entertainer. He does insane tricks like chucking a basketball, letting it bounce a few times off the walls, then off the backboard, into a trampoline, off the backboard again, and then through the hoop.

He can do the juggling stuff on demand because he’s put a lot of years into it (and you can clearly see that some of what he does is at the limit of his ability). And he can do some of the basketball tricks on demand, like the over the head shot (he wouldn’t do it in front of an audience if he couldn’t get it within a few attempts).

But I think many of his basketball tricks depend a lot on luck. Just a guess, but I don’t think he’s that much better at some of these tricks than you or I would be. The difference is that he was willing to make jillions of attempts before it worked. Have you ever given up on something because it didn’t work the first time, or the tenth time, or the hundredth time, or the thousandth time?